Context of 'September 4, 2001: Israeli Company Moves Out of WTC'

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The Zim-American Israeli Shipping Co. moves their North American headquarters from the 16th floor of the WTC to Norfolk, Virginia, one week before the 9/11 attacks. The Israeli government owns 49 percent of the company. [Virginian-Pilot, 9/4/2001] Zim announced the move and its date six months earlier. [Virginian-Pilot, 4/3/2001] More than 200 workers had just been moved out; about ten are still in the building making final moving arrangements on 9/11, but escape. [Jerusalem Post, 9/13/2001; Journal of Commerce, 10/18/2001] The move leaves only one Israeli company, ClearForest, with 18 employees, in the WTC on 9/11. The four or five employees in the building at the time manage to escape. [Jerusalem Post, 9/13/2001] One year later, a Zim ship is impounded while attempting to ship Israeli military equipment to Iran; it is speculated that this is done with the knowledge of Israel. [Agence France-Presse, 3/29/2002]

German authorities seize a boat in the port of Hamburg containing a shipment of rubber parts—allegedly bound for Iran—that could be used to make tracks for tanks and US-made M-113 armored personnel carriers. The seized boat, the Zim Anvers, is owned by the Zim-American Israeli Shipping Company. An Israeli company, PAD, headed by Avihai Weinstein, 34, had been issued a German export license for the shipment. The license specifies Thailand as its final destination, but according to German customs, the shipment is really destined for Iran. According to the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot, it was to be transferred in Hamburg to an Iranian cargo ship headed to the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. Weinstein claims he had no knowledge of the shipment’s actual destination. Raphael Eitan, an adviser on terrorism for several Israeli governments between 1978 and 1985, tells public radio the next day that it would have been impossible for Weinstein “not to know what the final destination of the shipment was. In this type of affair, there is no innocent contract. He knew the shipment was headed to Iran,” he says. Tehran denies any involvement with the boat. [Agence France-Presse, 3/29/2002]

Craig Unger. [Source: David Shankbone/Public Domain]Author and journalist Craig Unger writes that the 1996 Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies policy paper, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” (see July 8, 1996), was “the kernel of a breathtakingly radical vision for a new Middle East. By waging wars against Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, the paper asserted, Israel and the US could stabilize the region. Later, the neoconservatives argued that this policy could democratize the Middle East.” Unger’s thoughts are echoed by neoconservative Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli-American policy expert who co-signed the paper with her husband, David Wurmser, now a top Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mrs. Wurmser (see March 2007) calls the policy paper “the seeds of a new vision.” While many of the paper’s authors eventually became powerful advisers and officials within the Bush administration, and implemented the policies advocated in the paper in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the paper’s focus on Iran has been somewhat less noticed. Former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom the paper was written, has observed, “The most dangerous of these regimes [Iran, Syria, and Iraq] is Iran.” Unger writes, “Ten years later, ‘A Clean Break’ looks like nothing less than a playbook for US-Israeli foreign policy during the Bush-Cheney era. Many of the initiatives outlined in the paper have been implemented—removing Saddam [Hussein] from power, setting aside the ‘land for peace’ formula to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon—all with disastrous results.” [Vanity Fair, 3/2007]

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